Who Needs Negotiation Skills?

According the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia , negotiation can be defined as ‘a dialogue between two or more people or parties intended to reach a mutually beneficial outcome, resolve points of difference, to gain advantage’. An online dictionary also defines the word as; (1) ‘try to reach an agreement or compromise by discussion’, or (2) ‘to find a way over or through (an obstacle or difficult route)’.

Negotiation is a noun (word) associated with the verb (word) negotiate. The origin of the word negotiate comes from two Latin words, neg- (which means ‘not’) and -otium (which means ‘leisure’) forming the Latin word negotium (which means ‘business’). In the early 17th century the English word ‘negotiate’ was derived from the Latin word negotiat- (which means ‘done in the course of business’) from the verb negotiari (noun=negotium)

While the origin of the word ‘negotiate’ seems to suggest it is an occurrence or activity practiced within the business domain only, the online dictionary and Wikipedia definition above on the contrary suggest that it is a natural phenomenon that happens in both personal and business spheres of life.

In life, achieving personal or business goals will often need you to interact and collaborate with colleagues, customers/clients, collaborators, even friends and family members. The interaction will almost always create certain differences that must be resolved and demands from both parties that must be met. The demands of the other party remains an obstacle to your achieving your goal and you need to somehow get around it. These demands do not just disappear at your wish, in fact they almost always don’t. Getting around (negotiate) their demands then becomes the next natural agenda, which means a compromise or an agreement must be reached.

The other option to negotiation, of course is argument which leads to disagreement and resentment resulting in you or the other party feeling dissatisfied and the goal not completely realized. The point of negotiation is to try to reach agreements without causing future barriers to communications – a clean way of resolving differences and conflicts while meeting each parties demands half way and creating a win-win situation. But the reality is that achieving that desired win-win situation is better imagined than done. Negotiating successfully to achieve desired results can be a daunting exercise and requires skills.

So who needs negotiation skills? You need it! Everyone needs it. You need it because you are daily involved in one form of negotiation or the other in your personal and business life. The benefit of possessing good negotiation skills is that it avails you a quarrel free structured approached to resolving conflicts/differences and meeting the demand of others and the result is always ‘gaining advantage’ while creating a ‘win-win situation’ for all parties.

To learn more about how you can develop good negotiation skills, attend our negotiation skills class scheduled for 3rd and 4th of September, 2015. The class is designed to help you appreciate the structured ‘art and science’ approach to negotiation and how you can recognize the opportunity to gain advantage through good negotiation while creating a win-win situation for all parties. This is an investment you will make that will produce impact on your bottom-line. Register now and save 10% discount for earlier registration. Group registration of more than 3 also attract 10% discount.